La Herida

★★★★

Dir: Fernando Franco

(2013)

A young woman disappears into an abyss of depression and self harm in Fernando Franco's serious and affecting La Herida featuring an intense, every shot, performance by Marian Alvarez. It's a star making role for the young actress  playing Ana; Somehow making the very heavy subject matter lighter and, with some assured un-showy direction from Berger, cinematographer on Pablo Berger's stunningly beautiful Blancanieves, this engrossing and difficult film ends up a near triumph.

La Herida's plot is as bare bones as Alvarez's performance; She spends most of the film locked away, logging on to internet chat rooms; Her mere existence is tense and claustrophobic and Franco uses her destructive personality disorder to highlight a lack of knowledge and sympathy for depression in our lives. Her mother (Rosana Pastor) is seemingly unaware of her daughters plight, her work mate (Manolo Solo) is perhaps Ana's only source of happiness apart from her self harm; Her job involves helping pensioners to and from the hospital. Her boyfriend (Andres Gertrudix) breaks her heart in the opening scenes of the film and La Herida presents us with a person we desperately want to fix.

Make no mistake, the film is an unsettling, dark and tough ride. Franco and his cinematographer make the luminous Blancanieves feel worlds away, shooting blues and greens in natural light on Santiago Racaj's hand held cameras. Alvarez's tortured face and scared body is definitely the centre of the film and they aren't afraid of getting up close. She took home the best actress award at this years San Sebastian film festival (and rightly so) but there is more to La Herida; It elegantly and seriously presents us with a universal problem, highlighting our very own complacency or perhaps denial in recognising our friends and peers deepest problems.